Laying plywood over old tabletop
Hope everyone is doing well. I have an old tabletop completely destroyed. I’m thinking about sanding it flat and laying a sheet of plywood on top without adding on too much thickness. The table is beyond painting over. I wasn’t sure what wood I should use, I was originally thinking 1x pine but as a softwood it would get destroyed I think and the height would be too much. I could rip a sheet of 1/4in maple hardwood into 8x and mimic the plank look. It would be easier to just use a solid piece of hardwood, use a 1/4 trim on the sides and stain it. Do you guys think keeping the sheet intact would look better? Right now I have the plank look but it’s cheap veneer I don’t even think it’s real wood to begin with
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I used 3/4/inch Birch plywood and placed cleats on the bottom so it does not slide. Rounded the corners and sanded it smooth. Left the top completely intact, no ridges. Simple staining. It was covered with a table cloth — this worked well for multiple gatherings of the clan
Thank you, I looked into using plywood, sounds like a good plan. However I found some nice pieces of Radiata pine boards about 1x4.5inx6ft The original table to 39 1/2 wide by 71 1/2 long. That leaves about 1/4-5/8 inch of extra wood all the way around without cutting a single piece. A little short for using cleats. Will gluing the board to the top of the table and then on each side join the planks together solid enough or do I need pocket screws? The internet seems to say it will never look good and it will have gaps. Any opinion on this?
If you run all the boards through a jointer so that you get nice, clean, flat edges, you should be able to glue them all together. You'll need a planer to get a nice surface after that though, or a whole lotta sanding. Aside from that, there's no reason you couldn't edge glue all those boards together -- it's done all the time.
Bill